How to minimize NAnt binaries

Question

How do you set up NAnt with only the bare minimum binaries?

I have started using a default setup for small projects, loosely based on Tree Surgeon from Thoughtworks, with NAnt, MBunit/NUnit, NCover, NCoverExplorer etc placed in a Tools folder and checked in with the project.

The NAnt folder currently holds a complete installation of NAnt, and most of this is never used. I also have a lot of small throwaway/spike/proof-of-concept projects in my svn repos, and I feel that including all of NAnt is a bit wasteful.

I remember reading somewhere a guide to stripping out most of the files, but I cannot find this anywhere now.

If you have a link to such an article, or if you are able to shed some light on this issue, it would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

I've built distribution mechanisms based off of NAnt and here is what I've found to be the most stripped down version, while providing a good set of tasks:

• log4net.dll
• NAnt.Core.dll
• NAnt.DotNetTasks.dll
• NAnt.exe
• NAnt.exe.config
• NAnt.SourceControlTasks.dll (needed as an inherent dependency)
• NAnt.Win32Tasks.dll

With all of these files lying in the same folder and that folder existing in your path, you should be able to run a good majority of the tasks.

Hope this helps and good luck!